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Brooke Pryor, ESPN Staff Writer
PITTSBURGH — By sending Diontae Johnson to the Carolina Panthers in March, the Pittsburgh Steelers traded a wide receiver who accounted for 717 yards and five touchdowns in the 2023 season — good for 21% of all receiving yards and 31% of receiving yards among wide receivers and second most to George Pickens.
Johnson’s five scores, also tied for second most on the team with Pickens, accounted for 17% of the Steelers’ touchdowns last season.
Since then though, the Steelers have added more than 1,300 receiving yards and 14 touchdown receptions to their roster. The only problem? Those figures are the combined receiving yards of four players — three NFL wide receivers and one incoming rookie draft pick. Take out Roman Wilson‘s stats from his final year at Michigan, and the Steelers’ three most prominent wide receiver additions in free agency have a combined 512 yards and four touchdowns.
New quarterback Russell Wilson has a clear No. 1 receiver in Pickens, who led the team with 1,140 receiving yards a year ago, but beyond the third-year wideout, the rest of the position group is a smorgasbord — and the options to add another featured receiver to a medley of role players are rapidly disappearing.
Of those four newcomers — Van Jefferson, Quez Watkins, Scott Miller and Wilson — none are a shoo-in to be a No. 2 receiver. The returning Steelers’ receiving corps beyond Pickens also lacks a clear-cut No. 2 option. The Steelers released Allen Robinson II, who had 280 receiving yards and no touchdowns in his lone season with the team, earlier this offseason, making 2022 fourth-round pick Calvin Austin III as the only returning receiver who recorded any receiving yards in 2023 — his first season on the field after suffering a season-ending injury during his rookie training camp in 2022. In addition to Austin, the Steelers also currently have five receivers on the roster who didn’t have a single catch in 2023.
Though new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith often utilizes tight ends and Swiss Army knife weapons such as running back Cordarrelle Patterson in a system rooted in the ground game, the Steelers still need a complement of wide receivers to stretch the field. They have the framework for a functional, position flexible wide receiver group, one that features Pickens as a vertical threat and yards after catch machine, Jefferson as another vertical option, Wilson as a slot receiver and blocker and Austin as an undersized, yet versatile receiver.
“As an organization, we felt the value he adds to this team,” Smith said after the team selected Wilson last month. “I think the reality in the NFL, week in and week out, you’re talking about maybe 1,100 snaps in regular season, and hopefully more playing into February. So you need the depth. And certainly you may have [different] game plans, and if you have an injury somewhere and you don’t have guys that can go in, you’re going to have to adapt your plan. So if you have guys that are versatile, they know more than one spot, that’s a lot of added value on game day, especially as a young player.”
Still, there’s not necessarily a strong enough receiver on the current roster to keep defenses from smothering Pickens. That means looking for more external candidates, of which, there are few. Free agents such as Odell Beckham Jr., Tyler Boyd and DJ Chark Jr. have signed with other teams since the NFL draft, while potential trade candidates Brandon Aiyuk (49ers) and Courtland Sutton (Broncos) have seemingly been taken off the market. The Steelers could kick the tires on free agents, including Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Zay Jones, Mecole Hardman, Hunter Renfrow or Michael Thomas, or they could also monitor the post-June 1 cuts for other options like potential roster casualties Darius Slayton and Kadarius Toney. Promising young receiver Ben Skowronek, in the final year of his rookie deal, nearly hit the market, but the Los Angeles Rams worked out a deal Thursday to send him to the Houston Texans rather than release him.
The Steelers have more than $18 million in cap space, allowing them monetary flexibility to make a somewhat significant move at the position, and following the final round of the NFL draft, general manager Omar Khan left the door open to adding another meaningful player when he was asked if drafting Wilson was enough to round out the receiver group.
“We’ll see,” Khan said. “I said it before, if there’s ever an opportunity to improve the team, we’re going to look at it and if it makes sense, we’re going to go after it. But we restructured Alex [Highsmith]’s deal, and it puts us in a position to be flexible with some things if there’s an opportunity to do something.”
But the longer the Steelers wait, the fewer opportunities they have available.
Source: www.espn.com